'Just angry people': The Riots, haunted communities, and performing to understand.

In the narrative of the economic crisis and the developing picture of an increasingly unequal society, the UK riots of August 2011 have been read as a flashpoint; as a moment at which consumption and combustibility became literally legible although not straightforwardly comprehensible. Over the past twenty years, a wide range of UK theatre makers have used documentary forms and techniques, particularly in relation to events which are deemed of significant public interest and sensitivity. The paper, then, explores cultural responses to the events of August 2011, focusing in particular on Victoria Slovo’s documentary play, The Riots. Looking at the ways in which this piece sits alongside the Tricycle Theatre’s well known ‘Tribunal plays’ and the ways in which it is noticeably different from many of these, this paper will explore the theatre’s particular intervention in the events of the summer and the ways in which these events became mediated and understood. Considering the production’s approach to narrative, place and representation, the paper will assess the ways in which the Tricycle and Slovo approached the material and the ways in which their production situated itself in relation to (and against) the proliferating discourse around London and the riots. Paying attention to the way in which the production figured both its contemporaneity and the broader history which it sought to elucidate, and using Butler’s discussion of the reconfiguration of the ‘frame’, this paper will explore the possible interventions, and the limitations, of a theatrical response to an already mediatised ‘crisis’.